Introducing 52 Weeks of #SydCulture

January 10, 2017

52 Weeks of #SydCulture is a year-long campaign across all Time Out Sydney channels in 2017, with the goal of getting Sydneysiders more involved in the cultural life of their city

Last year, Time Out Group surveyed over 20,000 people, from 18 different cities around the world. Our goal? To find the world’s most loved city. In our 70-question survey, we asked about everything from affordability and work-life balance to pleasure-seeking. The result is an extremely rich dataset that doesn’t just compare cities globally, it even tells us which suburbs are the happiest and which are the most hungover (in Melbourne it’s Collingwood and in Sydney it’s Newtown, but you probably could have guessed that).

But there was a silver lining. By digging through the City Index data, we discovered a strong correlation between people who loved living in Sydney and people who engaged in more cultural activities (particularly theatre).

So, we’ve decided to do something about it.

The mission

Our mission in 2017 is to make Sydneysiders fall back in love with their city. Engaging in more arts and culture is the way to do it.

The campaign

Our campaign has three prongs:

We push one ‘must-see’ event per week through the Time Out Sydney weekly newsletter (an exhibition, theatre show or other arts and culture experience that is free, or cheap).

We invite a different ‘guest programmer’ each month to write a weekly blog that recommends 1-2 things they’ve seen and loved. Our first ‘programmer’ was Jess Scully, curator and councilwoman.

We encourage Sydneysiders to share their own #SydCulture experiences and recommendations via Instagram, with rewards and offers going to keen participants. When we started the campaign six weeks ago, there was one post using the hashtag #SydCulture, now there are well over 100.